US 20060170682A1
(i9) United States
(12) Patent Application Publication oo) Pub. No.: US 2006/0170682 Al
Van Liere (43) Pub. Date: Aug. 3,2006
(54) CACHING FOR VOLUME VISUALIZATION
(75) Inventor: Filips Van Liere, Eindhoven (NL)
Correspondence Address:
PHILIPS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY &
STANDARDS
P.O. BOX 3001
BRIARCLIFF MANOR, NY 10510 (US)
(73) Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.,
Eindhoven (NL)
(21) Appl. No.: 10/545,650
(22) PCT Filed: Feb. 9, 2004
(86) PCT No.: PCT/IB04/50093
(30) Foreign Application Priority Data
Feb. 21,2003 (EP) 03100413.8
A system for visualizing a 3D volume, represented by a 3D data set stored in a memory (890) as contiguous 2D slices with successive depths. A memory cache 895 provides faster access to part of the data set. A processor 860 creates a 2D representation of the volume by casting an imaginary bundle of ... rays through the 3D volume onto a corresponding rectangle of njxn2 pixels. Each time sequentially na samples are determined for each ray, giving a sequence of bundle blocks of each ... samples. An interpolation function is used to determine a 3D set of voxels contributing to the bundle block. The size of the bundle block is chosen such that the determined set of voxels fits into the cache. The set of voxels is then sampled from the cache.
